An article from Do or Die Issue 10. In the
paper edition, this article appears on page(s)
185-188.

Space Invaders

Rants about Radical Space

In the last few years, there has been a small wave of new radical social
centres in Britain. A number of people involved in Earth First! and the direct
action scene have been involved in opening these co-operatively owned and
managed spaces. Some of these places are up and running, others are still in the
early stages. As is healthy in any movement, there are different views on this
subject. Here we present two different pieces, one critical of these social
centres and another from someone heavily involved in one of the new
projects.

Welcome to legal social centres! Have a pleasant stay. The Cowley Club in
Brighton just opened. It's a posh looking bar. It has a bookshop, the prices are
cheaper than normal, the front door of the building is made of Indonesian
hardwood (Solidarity South Pacific?!) and the plants were bought at Ikea. It has
no dedicated meeting space (yet), only the bar area - revealing its priorities
in the design. In themselves, legal social centres are what they are; a social
enterprise - cafés, bars, possible gathering spaces. But the danger is
that, springing up on the back of the direct action movement, they will divert
activist time and energy into an essentially non-radical and liberal project. A
project perceived, by dint of association, as a radical social space.

The Cowley Club is not the only new legal social centre. There is the Sumac
Centre in Nottingham, which has filled a community space left behind by the now
defunct Rainbow Centre. The 1 in 12 Club in Bradford is a longstanding example
of a legal club. The recent social centre boom has taken a lot of time and
energy in the last couple of years, and caused some tension amongst those
involved (directly and indirectly). In a way, people feel they have had to take
sides as people's politics are thrown into sharper relief. An example of this is
some of the discussions that have emerged, the sudden imposition of legal
hurdles and ownership allowing more liberal concepts to push into the agenda:
should people be paid or not, the merits of CCTV, how the need to appear to be a
legitimate café and drinking hole means that people should perhaps
refrain from offering too many hardcore books in the library or bookshop or from
holding radical meetings or events 'for a while'.

The Sumac Centre considered asking people not to hold Earth First! Winter
Moot meetings there due to the threat of not getting their bar license. We were
collectively requested to respect the fact that the Sumac Centre was in a
vulnerable position and did not want to be too obviously connected with the
Moot. While I respect many of the radical people involved in the creating and
running of the space, this request implied that we were obliged to have some
allegiance to it as a project, even though we had not been able to use it for
the purpose for which we thought it had partly been created. Instead there is a
sense of coercion attached to these centres, from 'drink here rather than
elsewhere, comrade', through to 'don't set up free squatted spaces that might
compete'. These notions coupled with walking on eggshells around the demands of
legislation results in policing. An insidious self-policing of radical agendas
by those more willing to make concessions, creating division and fucking around
with grassroots support - no 'room at the inn' for autonomous groups who
potentially compromise the legal status of the centre.

How do we fight against property speculation and ownership, gentrification,
and corporate public space with a legal social centre that has more in common
with these things than not? How can we engender radicalism in our society if
people's first point of contact with non-mainstream politics is a space built on
compromise, which exists only because the state says it can? The bricks and
mortar, the signatures on legal and financial papers, the SWP-style membership
structure, the boredom on the faces of volunteer staff paying off the bank, the
ghetto - all these things that come with toeing the line, turn our politics into
rhetoric. Running a legal social centre is, at best, the equivalent of working
for an NGO.

It may be 'green' money that has enabled people to build them, but pursuing
social change through the mainstream means being forced to acquire 'skills'
applicable to the terms and conditions of mainstream ventures, it means creating
a respectable business to gain the confidence of investors. What does any of
this have to do with a movement in revolt against the machinery of capital and
which fights the idea of exclusion and powerlessness based on social, political
and economic leverage?

But, we hear the Management Committees cry, these centres are for the people,
they are welcome, it is their space too. Well sort of, but let's take the idea
of membership. If meetings do take place in The Cowley Club, for example, and
run into bar time, those attending the meeting must sign in to the club. We
complain about a lack of security in our culture and then set up formalities
requiring people to put their names and addresses to political activity. The
idea also clearly promotes the feeling that other people are in charge of your
access to social space, either alienating you from that space because you aren't
a member or from those outside the space if you are. Furthermore, buying
£400,000 buildings is not something everyone can do, it does not empower
other people to do the same, it only perpetuates the idea that some people are
consumers dependent on the product of those, the elite, who have the power and
connections to access resources that most people can't. People can 'work' for
the centres, they can get nominated into the inner circle, the decision-making
body, but how challenging, radical or empowering a process is that? A squatted
social centre or an action can inspire us and we can do it ourselves
too.

If we think we need 'access points' for new people to be inspired by our
political perspective, then surely this is best achieved through practising
direct action - not through acquiring crippling mortgages, obeying a myriad of
regulations set by the state and spending years doing DIY of the conventional
sort. The energy that has gone into legal social centres during what has been an
action-quiet couple of years might well have found other avenues for action had
a lot of very energetic people not been engaged in property development. And it
doesn't stop when the centre is 'up and running', as the mantra goes.

My best experience of a social centre (A-Spire in Leeds) is my
counter-argument. I like A-Spire - a lot. And although I haven't personally been
to them, the OK Café in Manchester and Radical Dairy in London are
projects that through their process and their inherent conflict with the state
have been truly radical and desirable spaces. Squatted spaces are temporary
autonomous zones reclaimed from property owners and councils. They explode
through the cracks in the system and when they are crushed - often forcibly -
they leave pieces of themselves everywhere, in the hearts of the people who went
there, in new behaviour, new alliances, new thoughts. They are a practical
attempt to get free from the state, to be free from the compromises and creeping
obedience of a legal space.

Everyone there holds the squatted space together, with no formal membership,
no nominations, no rulebook, just based on a self-determined responsibility for
each other and the people who may use or simply neighbour the space. As a
radical project, the group process of working together to choose and crack a
building, open it up, decide what it's going to do and run it until an eviction,
develops collectivity, responsibility, mutuality and autonomy. It has no
management committee, just a bunch of people who've come together, it does not
have to make money, no one gets paid for anything, there are no legal rules or
bureaucratic strangleholds limiting what can be done with the space beyond those
we internally discuss and evaluate. After much discussion about whether to be
selling anything at all, A-Spire had a really cheap bar with proceeds going
direct to various radical projects (not to 'pay off debts and the mortgage') but
you could bring your own too, it had a donations-café (with skipped and
stolen food), a free shop, an indoor skating ramp, an art space, and many
meeting spaces. It was radical to a level that I believe a legal social centre
can never be.

It is radical because the squatted social centre endeavours to get to the
heart of the matter by removing itself from questions of legality and
compliance. The space is laid bare. The people that occupy the space are laid
bare. Each squat, each A-Spire or OK Café or Radical Dairy is a new
world. Psychologically, the space is liberating. It is an action. It is about
clearing a way through formal structures and accepted ways of organising social
spaces. It is about how we relate to each other outside the dominant system. It
is hard enough to explore fundamental questions of social transformation,
process, mutuality, inclusivity, and hard enough to break down ingrained power
structures and behaviours in a squatted space which has gone a long way to
clearing its head of legal constraints and practical ownership, but it is even
harder to find those the questions if you still shuffling along head and
shoulders bowed under the added weight of legal and state apparatus or to reach
anything resembling autonomy.

The squatted social centre is radically politicising in and of itself. As
radicals, we try to challenge or bypass laws, regulations, routine, hierarchy.
Not only this, but I would argue that by desiring and seeking permanence through
legal social centres, in a sense we collaborate with the system. Every time we
leave the state behind, every time we accept that what we have created in a
squatted space may get moved on, we confirm our refusal of the system because we
understand that the state will only allow to be permanent that which is
compliant, corrupt, of no threat.. By accepting transience, by re-evaluating a
desire for permanence in a world we wish to move on from, we expand our ability
and desire to transform the world as it is into what we want it to be. The
temporary autonomous zone is characterised by an intensity, militancy and
dynamism only possible under those circumstances. For the time it exists, it is
everything - not a daily or weekly shift in a permanent space.

In my experience, people are very different in a squatted social centre. They
are more open and creative, more communicative and questioning. While doing the
bar at A-Spire one night I spent a long time talking to a young guy who'd just
left prison and heard that A-Spire was happening (this is a very important word
- a legal social centre doesn't happen!), that it was pretty cool and decided to
give it a go even though he didn't know anyone involved. He'd never experienced
anything like it and was really excited. I was excited too and we talked for
hours about our lives, and politics and the politics of the space. I don't hear
those conversations happening at the Cowley Club, and I'm pretty sure that had
it been a legal social centre with regular clientele and sign-up book, this guy
might well not have come in, would certainly not have been that excited by it
and I doubt whether I would have communicated with him in the way I did. There
would have been less to talk about for a start. A job is so much less exciting
and dynamic than an action.

That intensity creates an explosion of political understanding and bonding
that is harder to achieve in a permanent, legal space. When the last A-Spire was
evicted, it brought everyone together, it introduced people to crackdown by the
state. It wasn't rhetoric, it wasn't an eviction described to someone new to
evictions over morning coffee or read in a book. It was a clear and actual
political situation, an experience of 'us against them', inspiring solidarity.
It was difficult yet invigorating. If the Cowley Club or the Sumac Centre got
closed down, I believe it would divide rather than unify. We would probably see
blame put on the heads of other people in the community rather than on the
authorities. It would be a cause of resentment between those who have put money
and work into it and those who have 'transgressed', who have 'disrespected' the
space.

To me, the legal social centre is a worrying development, selling the
illusion of a politicised and radicalising public space when in fact it can by
its very nature be nothing of the sort. It poses about in a hoody and mask
keeping pretty well clear of the front line. The desire for accessible space is
the same desire that underpins autonomous, squatted spaces - to reach out beyond
the ghetto. But setting down roots in polluted ground is not going to develop
healthy politics or healthy communities. They are a sell-out and a buy-in. We
already compromise on so many things (from a place to live, to schooling our
kids). Surely we can conspire to at least keep our public spaces radical and
admit that if we have to make that many compromises to keep them, then they're
probably not worth having?

Disclaimer: This piece probably contains factual errors, omissions,
wild sweeping statements, vicious lies and blissful abuse of punctuation! It's
an opinion piece. In terms of the ethos and spirit of what I think 'we' stand
for and what I would like to see in society in general, I stand by the caution
and criticism expressed in this piece regarding the inherent liberalism and
dangers of entering establishment space. A culture of tense whispers has grown
up around the recent legal social centres: I hope this article will open up
space for more discussion about what legal social centres should expect from
the communities they demand energy and allegiance from, and I hope that we
can
distance ourselves enough from these extremely stressful and confusing projects
to reflect more deeply on the political character of the spaces we are
creating.

Stable Bases

The last couple of years have seen a few social
centres with an anarchist and radical ecological outlook opening up by buying
their premises, with other similar projects aiming to open soon. These spaces
have been created to fulfil a need that has been felt for a long time - the need
for social spaces under our collective control.

What goes on there can be as varied as the people involved, but a few current
uses that spring to mind are - cheap bar, cheap café, library, infoshop,
space for meetings, gigs, film shows, kids' events, self defence sessions,
office space, self-managed housing, advice and solidarity for benefit and work
problems, and not least an easily accessible way for people to wander in off the
street and find all this!

So far, so good, but there are two main ways of getting a building to house
these kind of activities. The first is to buy one, as has started happening
recently, the second is to squat one.[1] All things being equal, it's obviously
a better idea to just occupy what we need than it is to borrow loads of money
and buy somewhere. Unfortunately though, all things are not equal, and there are
different problems with both options.

The problems involved in buying a building are fairly obvious. Typically, the
buildings have been bought with money from 'green' or 'ethical' banks,
co-operative support groups such as Radical Routes, and small loans from groups
and individuals, all of which involves a few people dealing with a lot of
bureaucratic bollocks. There are various state agencies to deal with, although
this is mostly during the renovations stage (fire and building standards
regulations etc.). Once the centre's open there's much less of this, with the
two main exceptions of keeping accounts, and alcohol sales. For the latter you
need a licence, you have to keep to certain opening hours (unless you're
somewhere where lock-ins are common of course) and if the bar runs as a members
club people have to give a name and address when they join, and sign in with
that name when they come for a pint. Most importantly though, there can be a
need to make a certain amount of money every month to pay the debts off
(although this can come largely, or entirely, from rental income from housing,
i.e. probably from housing benefit).

There are also problems with squatting the spaces we need, the main one being
that whatever you do isn't going to be there very long! Before getting involved
in a (hopefully) more permanent space, I'd been part of lots of squatted social
centres, which lasted for an average of four to six weeks each. While they were
there, they were often great places, and sometimes shitholes, but I got very
frustrated by the constant moves. Temporary Autonomous Zones (TAZs) sound good
on paper[2], but I'm a lot less keen on them when waiting for angry builders
and
cops to show up first thing in the morning, after shifting everything across
town in shopping trolleys, four weeks after you last went through the process.
The first time it's an adventure, the tenth time it's a pain in the arse.
Inevitably, this kind of hassle means that there are long periods when there's
no space of this kind around at all. When the space does exist there's usually
no incentive to develop the building much - if it's going to be evicted soon,
why bother to fix the toilets, or make it wheelchair accessible? And if somebody
wants to sort out a venue for a gig, or a talk in a month's time, the best we
can say is that there might be somewhere for it... Of course none of this
is a problem with squatting itself, it's more a reflection of the current
weakness of the movements that squat buildings. Resistance movements in other
times and places have been able to take and hold the spaces they needed, and
that is something I want to see developing here and now. Squatting in the
current situation is certainly one way of trying to move towards this, but it's
not the only way.

Some problems can potentially arise with any social centre, whether it's
squatted or not. For a start, there's always some people who have the time,
inclination, and energy to put more into a centre (or any other project) than
most, and it's hard to run things in a way that means these people aren't seen
as the de facto leaders. Certainly, having no formal structures is no
guarantee that this situation won't arise. The fear of repression causing a more
or less subtle self-policing within centres can also be a problem, whether it's
fear of losing a licence, or fear of provoking an eviction. I've heard similar
sentiments expressed in squats, other social centres and road camps, and it's a
tendency that we should beware of - while it's not always clever to shout about
what we're doing, these kind of considerations shouldn't put us off doing things
that we'd otherwise want to do. Another common problem is the ghettoisation of
social spaces, whether deliberate or unintentional. Creating spaces where we can
put some of our ideas into practice also means there are more possibilities for
reconnecting radical politics to the working class communities around us. Not so
much by 'getting our ideas across',[3] but by providing a way for different
people pissed off with the way things are to meet, talk and act together, and a
resource for people to explore their own ideas. Obviously, this can only happen
in social centres if people come to them, and centres need to be welcoming. In
my experience it's not class war or riot posters on the walls that put most
people off, it's feeling like you need to have a certain haircut, or be a
certain age, or be middle class (to give a few common examples) that excludes
people. Nor does exclusivity have much to do with legality - squats can be
accessible places on the high street; just as bought buildings can be exclusive
hangouts for a particular scene.

I'd like nothing better than to see the emergence of a movement strong enough
to occupy the spaces it needed and keep them for as long as they were of use.
But that movement undeniably isn't here now. What is here now is a movement that
needs space for its activities, space for living our lives. Sometimes that space
is squatted and temporary, sometimes it's in co-operatives and less temporary.
I don't see a conflict between the two - more stable bases should be a way
of
fomenting and co-ordinating action, including squatting. At the moment, they're
not likely to conflict, because squats don't last long enough to 'compete' -
if
squats do become able to fulfil the same functions as more long term centres,
then I'll be the first to celebrate and throw the mortgage repayment forms in
the bin!

Notes

In other European countries there have been, and
are, other options such as being given buildings by lefty councils, or squats
being offered permanent contracts. These have typically been ways of trying to
buy off militant mass movements, and aren't likely to be a realistic choice here
right now!

Hakim Bey's theory of temporarily liberating space in a 'guerrilla' fashion,
with TAZs coming into existence, melting away and reappearing at another time
and place, in another form. It has could be argued that this is a way of
convincing ourselves that current weaknesses, during a low ebb of class
struggle, are actually virtues.

Since anarchist politics probably has at least as much to gain from a closer
connection to working class communities and struggles as vice
versa.

Social Centres

Autonomous Centre of Edinburgh
17 West Montgomery Place
Edinburgh EH7 5HA
Tel: 0131 557 6242
Web: http://www.autonomous.org.uk/Draws together many campaigns for social and ecological issues into a revolutionary
struggle to overthrow capitalism!

The Cowley Club
12 London Road
Brighton BN1 4JA
Web: http://www.cowleyclub.org.uk/Social centre in the heart of Brighton with
members bar, vegan café and radical
bookshop. Has regular events.

The Autonomy Club
84b Whitechapel High Street
London E1 7QX
Tel: 020 7247 9249New social centre in the East End sharing the same building as the long-running
Freedom Press bookshop, distro and publishers.

We
haven't listed squatted social centres because they move and change frequently. For
information on these,
you could try contacting the London Social Centres Network: